The GOP's Growing Anti-Islam Fanaticism

Conservative columnist Michael Gerson has gone off the GOP reservation again in a column in the Washington Post that condemns the GOP's growing anti-Islam fanaticism which ultimately plays into the hands of Islamic terrorists.  GOP candidates engaged in anti-Muslim demagoguery may win points with the increasing racist and religiously extreme party base - many of who seem to want to bring back the Crusades - but they are providing great video clips for terrorist to use in propaganda campaigns.  Sadly, the days of the GOP being a responsible political party are gone and  Gerson needs to understand that rational thought and arguments and the Republican Party are now generally mutually exclusive.  Hate, bigotry, homophobia, racism - these are now the GOP norm and the party's candidates only inflame the insanity and extremism of the party base.  In the long run, it harms America's long term interests.  Here are column highlights:

During the speech [to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001], Bush explained, “The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics — a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” 

This claim — that radical Islam is a violation rather than an expression of Islam — is controversial among many conservatives today. Bush’s formulation of this argument might well be disqualifying in the current GOP presidential nomination process. This change in language and attitude toward Islam represents the largest shift in Republican views of the war on terrorism since 2001. 

During the last two presidential nomination cycles, Republican candidates, at various points, have proposed requiring a loyalty oath for Muslims to serve in government; ruled out Muslims serving in their Cabinet; called sharia law “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States”; raised alarms about the “creeping attempt” to “ease [sharia] law and the Muslim faith into our government”; warned of “no go” zones where sharia law rules; described Muslim immigration as “colonization” and warned that immigrants “want to come and conquer us”; said there were only a “handful” of “reasonable, moderate followers of Islam”; described Islam as “a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem on the planet.”  

All this is combined with a durable conviction among some Republicans that President Obama offers Muslims special favor and may be a Muslim himself. As well as an almost magical belief that saying the words “radical Islamic terrorism” — like reciting an incantation — is a victory in the war against terrorism. 

These beliefs have become pronounced during the Republican Party’s current populist turn, in which the blaming of outsiders is a sure applause line (and, in some campaigns, a substitute for ideas and policy). The current rejection of “political correctness” . . . . has become a type of broad permission for the expression of properly repressed ethnic and religious resentments.

Bush did not make this point only because he was a decent human being . . . . Terrorists from the 9/11 hijackers to the Islamic State believe they will win if the world’s Muslims regard their conflict as Islam versus the West. Cultivating this belief is the main objective of their sophisticated propaganda.

Bush believed that we will win if the world regards this conflict as civilized humanity versus murderers who use religion as an excuse for hatred, tyranny and the will to power. 

Perhaps seven years without presidential authority has left Republicans unfamiliar with presidential responsibilities. But this contest of narratives remains the most important ideological struggle of our time. And Republicans should engage that debate, not complicate it.

Is the Main Stream Media a GOP Tool?

One hears constant charges from the far right and Republican side of the isle about the "liberal media" not providing "balanced" coverage.   I would counter that, if anything, the media is too deferential to the Republican Party - much as it gives deference to religious extremists and religion in general - and all too often merely parrots whatever bullshit the GOP is peddling while never fact checking any of it. One only need to recall the lead up to the Iraq War which was based on deliberate Bush/Cheney lies to remember but one example of this frightening failure.   The media bears a huge responsibility in keeping politicians honest, but the same standard needs to be applied to the GOP as Hillary Clinton.  A piece in The Week looks at the media's responsibility.  Here are excerpts:

You can't understand Hillary Clinton's perspective without understanding what happened in the 1990s, and the media transformation that was going on while Bill Clinton was president. From the first moments of that presidency, Clinton's opponents were convinced he was corrupt to the core. They assumed that if they mounted enough investigations and tossed around enough charges, something would stick and Clinton would be brought down. If you think the endless Benghazi investigations are ridiculous, you should have been around then . . .

Conservative talk radio came into its own in the 1990s, providing Republicans both an outlet for their most outrageous charges and a goad to produce more of them. (When they won control of Congress in 1994, Republicans literally made Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of their freshman class). Fox News debuted in 1996, in time for the impeachment crisis of 1998. The previously leisurely news cycle accelerated rapidly, and nothing fed it like scandal.

While the Clintons bear responsibility for getting many of those scandals going with questionable decision-making or behavior, it's also true that the mainstream media made huge mistakes during that period by treating every Republican charge, no matter how ludicrous, as though it was worthy of a full-scale investigation splashed across the front page. Again and again, they reacted to the most thinly justified accusations as though the next Watergate or Iran-Contra was at hand, and when it turned out that there was no corruption or illegality to be found, they simply moved on to the next faux-scandal, presented no less breathlessly.

That past — and journalists' failures to reckon with it — are still affecting coverage today. When this email story broke, how many journalists said it was important because it "plays into a narrative" of Hillary Clinton as scandal-tainted? I must have heard it a dozen times just in the past week.

Here's a tip for my fellow scribes and opinionators: If you find yourself justifying blanket coverage of an issue because it "plays into a narrative," stop right there. That's a way of saying that you can't come up with an actual, substantive reason this is important or newsworthy . . . during the Clinton years, reporters would say they had no choice but to devote attention to some scurrilous charge, whether there was evidence for it or not, because someone had made the charge and therefore it was "out there."

They should apply similar standards to all the candidates; if it's important that Clinton used a private email account while at State, then it must be equally important that other candidates have used private emails for work, and they should be subject to as much scrutiny as she is. When a new revelation or accusation emerges, the questions reporters should ask themselves include: Is there evidence for this? What's the context in which it took place? How does it bear on the presidency?

"Does this play into a narrative?" ought to be the last question they ask. As I wrote about Hillary Clinton, there are ways in which she owes her supporters better than what they've gotten from her in the past. But that's only half the story. The news media owes their readers, listeners, and viewers better than what they got, too.